


John Knows

by Rebldomakr



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Serial Killer Sam, john's a good dad, just a bit, only a tiny bit of wincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:58:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5227784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebldomakr/pseuds/Rebldomakr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John knows his son isn't all right in the head, but he's okay with that. He loves Sam to his darkest pit of his heart. He knows he shouldn't feel as happy as he did when he saw Sam laying over Dean's naked chest. He shouldn't been okay with what Sam's done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John Knows

_**John Knows...** _

_But what can he do?_

Mary had known, too. The first day they brought Sammy home, walking him into his nursery while Dean ran circles around them and begged to get to hold his brother. She had laughed, told Dean to run downstairs and get a blanket from the living room, and he shot away to be back in two minutes. She walked over to his crib, laying the bundle down inside and undoing the blankets so he could move around. Sam's eyes weren't as wide as they were when he was born, but he was as silent as he had been that's for sure. Silent, eyes half-closed as though he was tired but John knew that's just how newborns looked sometimes.

"John, honey, you have to promise me something." Mary said.

"What is it?" John asked, walking up to the crib and staying down at his son. When he looked into Sam's eyes there was the creation of a weird bubble in his chest, like the thing in front of him was dangerous even though it hardly two days old.

"Sammy's going to need us." She said. "You can tell, can't you? He isn't like Dean, or other children." Her eyes looked into John's, pleading, then they turned to Sam and they became so filled with love it hurt. The same love that she had when she looked at Dean, burning just as bright and just as strong. It should've been that way for John, too, but he didn't know if he could bring that love out yet and he couldn't understand why he felt so cautious around his newest son.

"You think?" John said.

Sam made a soft little noise, eyes darting towards the doorway where Dean had left. He reached out for it desperately. Mary cooed down at him. "It's okay Sammy, Dean'll be right back." She said. "John, promise me you'll love him. I know how you feel, because you aren't a mother, but he's my baby and I can't stand knowing that you can't..." She trailed off, hesitant to say those final words and looking completely torn.

"Of course I love him." John assured her. "It's just that..."  _He gives me the goddamn creeps._ "I don't know Mary, but I love him and I always will, he's my son."

"Protect him and take care of him, he's going to need it more than Dean." She had said.

And she didn't know how right she was.

Six months of development in the family, of Sammy becoming addicted to not jsut Dean's touch. He cried every morning when John left for work, demanding at least a minute to be held before John left or else he'd throw a fit. He slept in Dean's lap after breakfast and in John's as he fell asleep, and always in Mary's arms for the rest of the day if he wasn't given time to be alone and bond with his stuffed animals. At night someone would sing him a lullaby, typically Mary whose voice soothed him the quickest like any mother's did. During the weekends when they took Dean to the park, Sam would sit in his stroller and babble endlessly to John and Mary while his eyes followed Dean everywhere.

A girl that Dean seemed to like tripped once and hit her head on the edge of the sandbox and they had to take her the hospital. Sam had erupted into cries right after, so the Winchester's had no time to stay with chaos because they had a baby boy who seemed like he was in sudden, extreme pain. Blood came out of his nose and he was taken straight to the doctor, who assured them that Sam had just gotten a tiny cut and after giving them a few antibiotics to prevent an infection they were sent back home.

November 2, 1983 Mary died and left John alone with their boys. They became his boys, he thinks, and he could hardly stand to be anywhere without Mary at first. He cried every night for a straight week, comforted only by his sons who refused to leave his side because they needed it, too.

Somtimes John wondered when he became more important than Mary, and when Dean became more important that all of them. He guessed it was around the time he saw the world beneath the one he always saw, selling the house and emptying all of their bank accounts. It had taken a few years to catch onto credit card scams instead of just making money at the bar, a far better thing to do since that he didn't have to leave his boys alone at night. Leaving them always made him feel so anxious because he knew there was probably something out for Sam and Dean couldn't raise a child by himself.

John left as little as possible while his sons grew up. Dean insisted he could take care of Sam just fine, but he didn't seem to think of himself. Sam was seven years old when he realized the truth about John, not that he ever seemed to believe it in the first place because the kid's almost been smart, and insisted on learning on how to handle a gun like Dean. So John taught him.

They were out in a forest clearing, paper targets set up. John handed Sam a tiny revolver, telling him how to stand and to be careful as he pointed. With perfect precision, Sam hit a cat that was sitting not too far away from them. The bullet hit the animal and the thing cried out in pain, and continued to do so until Sam shot it again with dead accuracy. His eyes were burning with a fire that he didn't even have when he looked at Dean, grinning a small smile that reminded John of the things he hunted, but he didn't care because it was his son.

Sam was a better shot than John and Dean combined, it turned out. John was proud of his youngest, ignored the gleam in his son's eyes when he gave him ownership of the revolver he used, and ignored the glee Sam had when he got his own collection of a dozen knives by the time he was ten.

John never left his sons alone in motel rooms and shady apartments for more than three days at a time, but he felt like he was abandoning them every time he did. Sometimes there wasn't enough money to spare to them for emergencies, and sometimes no matter how much he packed them with food there never seemed to be any left by the time he got back. Then he met Bobby, who was a stable force and someone he could trust to leave his boys with. After Bobby there was a number of others, good hunters who became friends whom he could trust with his sons. Sam and Dean's favorite was Bobby, for a number of reasons that included his ability to home make meals and hundreds of books. They could play in the salvage yard for hours.

John was sometimes able to forget pieces about his son. Until Sam was thirteen, and John walked in on him cleaning blood off of his knife.

"Son?" He asked, eyes unable to move away from the weapon. "What happened?"

"Nothing." Sam told him, looking up, eyes gleaming with happiness. "It's okay daddy, promise." And it was the first time he called John that since he was seven, his voice alight and happy and John couldn't bring himself to get mad.

"Be careful, son." John said.

"You taught me how a hunt, didn't you?" Sam laughed.

John knew his son was right. Sam knew he was doing, too, because there was never a body found and there was a sudden clump of three hundred dollars in John's duffel that he knew he didn't make himself. He found it and looked to Sam, who smiled happily at him from where he was eating Dean's macroni cheese with hot dogs sliced and mixed in.

On their way out of town a few days later, John caught wind of a eleventh grade teacher gone missing. Her name was Isabella Jackson, a woman with green eyes and black hair. People guessed she was a victim of the killer that had worked their way around town already, but she was missing four hundred dollars taken from her credit card and no one really knew. John bought his sons a hefty breakfast, and wondered what made Sam single the woman out.

John knows his son isn't all there, not completely and with a few screws missing or not fastened just right, but he doesn't care. He would've, maybe, a long time ago but now Sam's a pillar in his life. He couldn't stand the thought of having to lose Sam, or Dean for that matter, because they were his boys. He'd love Sam even if his son killed every man, woman, and child in the world and bathed in their blood. He'd love Sam even if he took a knife to his throat, killing without a care to the fact he had raised him. It was a love he knew Sam recognized, the reason why Sam seemed to trust him and love him back.

There was probably a version of John Winchester, in some alternate world, where he did something to fight against it all. A version of himself who'd try to separate his sons, push them away from each other to protect Dean and anyone who'd Dean come to love and keep Sam from hurting one too many people. It could be easily said that his youngest son was a monster, John knew that, but he loved Sam and the thought of hurting him...

It was unbearable.

Nights came and went like the wind. As they passed town to town, John knew his son's body count was growing by the day. In a Texas town, ten teenage girls were found grossly mutilated, so horrible that it made national news. Sam made them dinner their last night there, using Dean's funds to buy three steaks and cook green been casserole and mashed potatoes. It was a delicious meal, one where John almost couldn't move away from the kitchen table he was so stuffed with good food.

John kept count of Sam's kills. By the time Sam's birthday struck fifteen, there was a total far into triple digits. He watched Sam, sometimes, come in late at night and helped him clean blood off his knives. Sometimes he'd talk to Sam, who'd tell him highly edited versions of his kills.

"Anna was very pretty. She had red hair." Sam told him, sitting in the front of the Impala while Dean snored away in the backseat. His eyes, beautiful in their unique shifting-color way, gleaming as they always did in relation to these things. "She cut herself." He said. "She bled a lot."

John looked over to his son, eye straying from the dark road. "Did she hurt?"

"No." Sam said. "She couldn't feel a thing. I don't like it when people are in pain, so it's a good thing."

"That's good." John smiled, comforted by knowing that all of Sam's victims probably didn't suffer. He knew his son wasn't sadistic in the first place- he was driven by something else.

Maybe, in his son's mind, it was a form of art.

During one Valentine's Day, a month after Dean's twentieth birthday and a few months before Sam's sixteenth, John left them with fifty dollars and made sure the kitchenette had food. He only had to be gone for two days, so he knew his sons would be fine.

He came back earlier than he thought he'd be. He unlocked the motel room, silent as can be, and pushed open the door.

Sam was laying naked on top of Dean's chest, his big brother's arms wrapped tight and protective over him. John couldn't bring himself to be feel disgusted- he knew Dean loved Sam and Sam loved Dean, Sam's love for Dean probably going farther than Dean'd ever know for a long time.

He left them be, coming back the next afternoon carrying lunch from a diner. Sam ran up to him, hugged him tight and said, "I don't think I'll have to hurt anyone again." His voice was soft, so quiet and John knew Dean couldn't hear them but was confused by the display of affection Sam rarely showed to John when they weren't completely alone.

John knew he should be angry. He knew he should feel something other than happiness at his son realizing that he didn't have to hurt anyone, that he already owned Dean mind, body, and soul.

"That's good son." John smiled. "Now, why don't we eat up, huh? Got a long ride north."

"'kay, daddy." Sam chirped happily, eyes so wide and happy.

John knows he should be disturbed by Sam's mindset, but he didn't care.

**Author's Note:**

> All the serial killer stories I've read always seem to make Dean the more insane, more of the killer. I can't seem to find any good stories where it's Sam acting as the lone serial killer, Dean unknowing or still supporting his brother. It's a beautiful thing for me when John and Dean forgo their morals for Sam, idk why.


End file.
